Iron Knight
by Toasterman
Summary: Tony Stark had been called many things: prodigy, genius, Avenger, Director, CEO and Secretary of Defense, but in the end he had decided only one mattered: Iron Man. But now he holds a new title in a new place, and he doesn't know what to make of it.
1. Chapter 1

_Anthony Edward Stark had been called many things: prodigy, genius, innovator, and playboy. He had been labeled both a hero and a villain, and had decided both were too constricting. He had been an Avenger, a Director, a Chief Executive and a Secretary of Defense, but in the end he had decided only one mattered: Iron Man._

_But now he holds a new title in a new place, and he doesn't know what to make of it._

Elseworlder. It's got a ring to it, I'll give it that, and while not technically correct—I'm from a different time, thank you much—it gets the point across for the layman.

I am from somewhere else, and I don't belong here. That I'm standing in a Stark Tower overlooking the industrialized landscape of _Mars_ is proof enough of that. It's hard to fit in here, in this far future, but if there is one place for me, it's here.

Mars is the home world of the Adeptus Mechanicus, the resident techie nerds of the Imperium of Man. They form a priesthood that worships machines and they tend to graft cybernetics to their bodies to get closer to the 'Machine God'.

So they're a little off in the head, but that's okay. They love technology, so we have that in common. I swear the moment I flashed my extremis to them they nearly had a communal seizure. Besides, compared to some of the other people I've met, these guys are perfectly sane.

I'm celebrating my sixth new year in this universe alone with a bottle of non alcoholic scotch and an old Wings album. I synthesized the scotch, and the album came out of my suit's memory banks. Sometimes I wonder just why I stocked it with so much useless crap.

Alone. That's what I am now. I built a Jarvis AI a few years back, and though he's a great friend, the fact that I can call him such is sad. No matter how you slice it, building a computer program to sound and think as close to your old pal as possible is pathetic, and it doesn't fix the true problem.

I'm the only Elseworlder. The thought is sad enough to make me want to cry into my fake drink. But I've never subscribed to self pity, and I'm not about to start now.

I turn from the window. "Suit."

The extremis coating spreads across my body and the armor forms over it, both literally growing out of my own biology. The suit solidifies and seals itself. My repulsor sword pulls out of its mount by the fireplace and soars across the room, landing in the palm of my hand. The uplink between its hilt and my projector glows and the blade hums to life.

A voice enters my head. "Going somewhere, sir?"

"Yeah. Load yourself into the Starhopper, Jarvis. We've got work to do."

_Iron Knight_

_Chapter One: Stark Mechanicus_

I once said the job is its own reward. I now find myself protecting the largest area a hero has ever protected. The Imperium spans the entire galactic plane, and has been developing it for ten millennia. Its population is incalculable. The threats that face it are colossal, like, make Galactus piss himself colossal.

Being a super hero here is harder than I've ever had it. The Imperium's higher-ups, thanks to their own closed minds, want to kill me for being an Elseworlder. The only thing truly keeping me from their wrath is the Mechanicus.

And even with all that, the job is still its own reward. As much as I miss my old life and hate being the one cape in the universe, I kind of pity my old comrades for never knowing the high of saving planets on a daily basis, or the unconditional love I've been shown.

I speak again of the Mechanicus. The techpriests love me to the point where my name has been changed. I'm now Magos Superior Anthony Stark, the Iron Knight. At first I thought it was a bit silly, what with the fancy title and the parades and near-religious worship and such, but it's grown on me. I mean, Iron Knight? Why didn't I think of that?

So before I break atmosphere and get to work, I take a moment to do a flyby of the Complex Primaris. The city is beautiful this time of year, when the axel tilt gives shadow to the surface from the orbital factory ring. Below me I can see people, servitors and techpriests alike, looking up. They salute when they see me, hands to their chests in the cog symbol of the cult. I return it with repulsor fire into the sky. It backlights the smog clouds with a brilliant array of colors, and cheers rise from the factory spires.

God help me, but I love these people.

((' '))

Getting to the bad guys isn't a problem anymore, even when the distance to them is measured in parsecs. The Starhopper add-on gives me an infinite range and faster movement than anything else in existence. It's an orbital carriage that I attach my armor to, built solely to get me where I need to go, when I need to get there.

Its FTL drive surpasses anything the Imperium can produce, but I can't claim the idea. Reed did the real work, the real theorizing. I just had the resources. I wish he could see it working.

The Starhopper is holding position above Mars when I find it. It de-cloaks as I draw near its burst signature, and when I touch it, it powers up. I lock myself into its harness. Ablative plates fall into place around my armored body and secure me to the device. All that's left is a small slit of reinforced glass so that I can see out, something I'm going to be immensely thankful for in three, two, one…

The Starhopper engages its primary drive core and I'm off, skipping beyond Sol's extended gravity well in .003 seconds, heading into the fight. God, what would I do without Reed Richards?

((' '))

I'm assuming, of course, that there will be a fight involved. An explorator station in the eastern fringe sent out a black ball message a week ago, the contents of which amounted to a cry for help. Explorators are techpriests that probe the pockets of deep space overlooked by the Imperium, searching for arcane technologies. They're used to running into trouble and are outfitted with Skitarii escorts, the military arm of the Mechanicus. For one to issue a distress signal is an indicator of a grave threat, so my expecting a fight is not unreasonable.

This particular explorator station is a space fort in the Prasius system. Called the _Tarantula_, it has a record of strip mining asteroids for resources and has done so for the past three thousand years. It's quite a streak, but it might not last much longer.

((' '))

I drop into terrestrial speeds six hours later. In that time, I've made it halfway across the galaxy and managed to read every bit of known data on the Prasius system. When I get there, the system is little like the reading. My info indicated a lush six planet locale, with three of the worlds verdant and filled with life. Instead, I find three dead worlds, stripped of all greenery.

This isn't uncommon in the slightest. There are easily a hundred or more things that could be responsible, and none of them are my problem. The deaths of the most likely alien inhabitants of these planets are someone else's concern. I'm here for the explorators.

The _Tarantula_'s distinctive engine signature is faint, but enough to get a fix on its position near the second planet. I move Starhopper in closer, the suit's scanners set for wide dispersal. In orbit it becomes apparent that the _Tarantula _isn't near the planet; it is _on_ the planet.

With this information, I disengage from the Starhopper and descend into the atmosphere.

((' '))

Falling toward a planet's surface. The feeling of my stomach lurching, the uncontrolled acceleration, the needles of fear pricking my skin. These are familiar sensations, and they hold a special place inside me, and will forever be a reminder of how I got here, how I arrived in this time.

I fell through stars, clouds, blue sky. The timeslide disrupted my suit, shut it completely down. I scrambled to reboot it before touchdown.

I failed, and landed on my damn head.

When I finally rebooted enough systems to see and move, I was being dragged through the muck of some backwater swamplands by an ork. I broke free and blew a hole the size of my fist through its skull. It died, but its two buddies jumped me. Thanks to my weakened armor, unfamiliarity with the foe, and the concussed state of my brain, it quickly became the hardest fight of my life.

A team of Adeptus Mechanicus adepts found me before the orks could tear my head off. They saved me without hesitation. For that alone, I owe them my life.

They took me back to their nearby explorator base and helped me back to health. I spent the next month upgrading my systems, and together we beat the orks back into orbit.

They were explorators, brave men and women like the crew of the _Tarantula_. So when I see the remains of the space fort sprawled across the desert with its many asteroid-gripping limbs broken and scattered across a mountain range, I can't help but get angry.

I check the wreck for survivors. There are none, but the search isn't completely useless. The damage to the fort's hull isn't consistent with a freefall landing. In truth, there should be little left to examine after a full force fall from orbit, but aside from some low velocity collision scratches—and the total severing of its grappler arms—there is little wrong with the _Tarantula_. It is as if someone or something pulled it from orbit…

Alarms scream in my ears and I am yanked through the air, across the desert. I fire my repulsors to stop. They don't respond, and I slam into a mountain with the equivalent force of a Mach 3 impact.

"What the f—"

I'm yanked again, this time ten thousand feet in the air, where I'm promptly left hanging. I run a check through the suit's systems, but there is no electronic contamination. All systems are running fine; I just can't use any of them.

"Seriously, what the hell?"

"Anthony Edward Stark. Out of all the possibilities, I never believed I would be meeting you here."

That voice is familiar. It's the voice of a madman. It's the voice of someone more dangerous than any threat I've faced since my slide, and if it's who I think it is, then this galaxy just got a whole lot more dangerous.

I am turned around, and suddenly everything makes sense: the lack of life in this system, the _Tarantula_'s intact state, and why the very steel in my suit has betrayed me.

"Hello, Magneto."

He smiles. Why of all the smug, bastard-faced, annoying damn things he could do…he smiles.

"Well, if that's how it's going to be, I should call you Iron Man."

"That is how it's going to be," I say. "You don't get to use my name, Lensherr."

He snaps his fingers and I'm thrown face-first into the desert floor. As I lay there, head spinning from the impact, my thoughts drift to everything I know about Magneto, looking for a way to beat him.

He controls magnetism. My suit is made of metal. End of brainstorming.

"You know, Iron Man…wait, is it still Iron Man? I could have sworn you changed your name."

I struggle to my feet. "Iron Knight."

"Ah yes, Iron Knight. We're really getting unabashed with the chivalrous metaphors, aren't we?" There it is again: that smug smile. A repulsor in the face would wipe that right off. "Anyway, you now work for the Adeptus Mechanicus, or so I hear. Is this correct?"

"What's it to you? We aren't accepting new members right now, though I'll make you a mortal enemy if you ask nice."

He pulls me closer, to the point where his face is right in my visor. At this distance, I can really pick out his features. The thick neck and super-square jaw are nice touches and just as surprising as the lack of wrinkles.

"My dear boy, I have no interest in joining your _cult_. Nor do I wish to continue the fight from six years ago."

"You have a funny way of showing that, what with the holding me in thrall thing."

He frowns. "If I didn't, you would attack me."

"Okay, Magneto, you've got me there." He does. I've already figured out the precise trajectory to tear his head off with my sword. "But can you blame me? You pulled down a Mechanicus vessel and killed its entire crew."

"Dear boy, I've killed no one."

A plate of metal floats over a dune and sets down next to us. It's about a mile across, holding all 1,500 crewmembers of the _Tarantula._

"Okay, so maybe you haven't. But you still crashed that ship."

"Merely to get your attention," he says. "I knew bringing it down would attract the Iron Knight, and it worked. Do I now have your attention?"

"Fully and completely."

"Good. I'm going to trust you now."

He lets me go and I activate my armor shield. The energy field pops into place around my body. Aside from the rendering me invulnerable to all conventional attacks, it interferes with the magnetic properties of my armor, preventing the steel's magnetic signature from extending beyond its perimeter. He could beat it down, but in that time, I would lop his head off.

We look at each other for a moment, waiting for the other to make a move. I don't and he doesn't, so we relax.

I pop my visor. "Okay, Magneto. You've got five minutes."

"You don't seem to be aware of this, so I'll tell you it for free: you and I aren't the only ones who timeslid at Genosha."

((' '))

Genosha. The thought of it brings back a flood of memories.

Satellites had tracked Genosha's development for years. SHIELD had six orbitals trained on the island at all times. That's how big a threat Magneto was: he needed that much attention from the world's most advanced espionage agency.

I was director back then, so when the flow of visitors to Magneto's little paradise increased, I was the first to know. Not that this was uncommon. Lensherr had always been pretty popular with the mutant crowd. Xavier always had the young crowd with his school, and even some of the more morally right adults. But for the disaffected, the disillusioned, and the delirious, there was no real place to go aside from Magneto's.

But the guys heading there in this case weren't all mutants. Thugs, terrorists, even Hydra and AIM were on site. The fact that those two were working together was distressing enough, and convinced me of just how bad the situation was. Whatever was going down was going to be huge, and with Magneto at the helm, it was serious business.

So we got a team together. Avengers, New Avengers, registered and unregistered heroes, the X-men; everybody. The plan was simple: beat Magneto's army into eighteen different kinds of hurt and bounce out before the place blew from a failsafe.

The op went off without a hitch until someone popped a timeslide portal open in the middle of the island. I was closest, so I got sucked in first. I was fighting with Magneto at the time, hand-to-hand, on top of a tower, so it's no surprise that he got taken as well.

But others? It never occurred to me that was possible. Call me self-centered, but that sounds just—

((' '))

"Stupid. That doesn't make sense."

"No," he says, "Your _cape_ doesn't make sense."

"This was a gift from the Fabricator General. It goes with the shoulder pads. And I don't have to take that from a guy wearing _that_ helmet."

He doesn't reply. That makes me smile. I don't have as much pompous superiority as him, but every now and then I have my moments.

"Well," he concedes, "It goes with the knight motif."

"Thank you. Now then, you were saying?"

He paces around me, but I keep facing him, my unibeam targeter locked onto his head.

"Others did slip through the portal and yet survive," he says. "I know, because I can feel them."

"I take it that 'feeling' ability has something to do with your unexplained buffness."

He smiles, but this time it's less smug. "Indeed. Since my treatment, my capabilities have increased a hundredfold. Before I was limited by my frail human from. Damned by my own age, if you will. With that no longer a factor, I am nigh unstoppable."

I want to know exactly what treatment that was, but there are more pressing issues. "Have you found anyone?"

He shakes his head. "Only you, but then, you weren't hard to pinpoint. You've never been very good at keeping quiet."

"Yeah, it's my real Achilles heel," I reply. "But I make up for it with brains. And right now, my brains are telling me you want a team-up."

He turns to look at me. "You aren't lying about those brains, boy."

"The answer's no. I'll look for them on my own."

"You won't find them. Without my abilities, you won't be able to pinpoint their locations. In this galaxy, it would be impossible."

He's right. I hate it with every ounce of my being, but he's right. The Imperium itself is huge, not to mention the non-imperial areas. Even with all the resources the Mechanicus can guarantee me, I would be looking for lifetimes.

"And you get—?"

"The capability, my boy," he says. "The speed at which most vessels move is much too slow to find someone. By the time I get there, they've moved on. And whenever they are in the Warp, they disappear from my sight. I know you have a faster way."

He's talking about the Starhopper. The son of a bitch wants to use my Starhopper.

"Answer me this, Magneto: what will we do when we find them?"

He brushes the question aside. "Whatever you please, Iron Knight. I'm only looking for one."

I see the sadness in his eyes, and now I get it. Lensherr has always been unstable. It's one of the things that makes him such a pain. One day he's an X-man, the next he's the evil ruler of a country. But the one thing that's always present in whatever psychosis he's having that month is the love for his daughter.

"Fine. I'll help you find her."

He looks up at me. "My thanks, Anthony Stark."


	2. Chapter 2

We spend the next five hours repairing the _Tarantula_. Between Erik's abilities and my technical know-how, we repair the thing to operational capacity in an afternoon, and have it crewed up and in orbit by evening. I give the Magos leading the explorators a send-off salute with my repulsor sword and check their engines one more time. When I'm sure the Gellar field will hold I let them translate to warp and return planetside.

Magneto's waiting for me on a mountain top, arms crossed. He looks sort of scary.

"Lensherr, have your eyes always glowed?"

"Only in darkness. When day turns to night, I am able to pinpoint the locations of our comrades in the sky."

"Uh-huh." Creepy. "So where are they?"

He points to a certain star. "The nearest one is there."

I track his finger and my visor highlights the star. Overlaying the celestial view atop a starchart, I line them up as best I can, and determine the coordinates.

"That's Nimphus Ophelia, a small system in the Tau cluster. Last reports put it as the site of action between Ultramarine and Tau forces."

"You say that like it's a problem."

"Can't say that it's a good thing. The Space Marines aren't my biggest fans. They think I'm sacrilegious and a heretic."

"I can't imagine why."

"Don't get snippy, Lensherr." I call the Starhopper. "Jarvis, we need transport."

Twenty seconds later, the Starhopper is hovering in front of us, engines humming.

"Here, sir," Jarvis says. "Am I to understand we are working _with_ Magneto now?"

I climb onto the vehicle and pop the passenger cabin. "He's reformed."

"Reformed, sir?"

"Don't question it."

Magneto looks up at me. "The butler?"

"The computer," I reply. "I made him a couple years back. Y'know, keep me company?"

"That's pathetic."

"Remember what I said about getting snippy?"

_Iron Knight_

_Chapter Two: Berserker Barrage_

In the 41st millennium, communication over long distances is handled in possibly the most inefficient way imaginable. Messages are given to half-ass mutants called astropaths, who are entrusted to project telepathic memos through a hellish dimension, rendering the minds of both the sender and receiver vulnerable to attack by the astral forms that lurk within the Warp.

Worse than that is the fact that every message takes a random amount of time to get from point A to point B, and it's never shorter than a day. To me, this is unacceptable.

Starhopper has a cannon on it that can establish an FTL communications beam link-up with any other device of its kind. It's called the StarkCom, and it's one of only two in existence.

Yes, the name is my ego running away from me. No, I will not change it.

((' '))

"Jarvis, patch me into the StarkCom. I need to talk with General Lovidicus."

"Right away, sir."

We're in route to Nimphus Ophelia, me in the lower compartment, Magneto above me. Though we're back to back, I still know he's smiling. I can feel it.

"StarkCom?"

"Shut up, Lensherr. When you invent something that works, you can call it whatever the hell you want."

"Don't be so hostile, my boy. I'm sure you had a good reason for the name aside from ego."

"Go. Die."

"Uplink established, sir."

I turn back to the image on my visor. The waveform connection is strong, so strong that I hear background noise. I love it when my stuff works.

"Iron Knight, this is the Fabricator General." He says this in machine code, the binary language that most techpriests favor over gothic. "Why have you contacted me and what do you need?"

The Fabricator General is just one of his titles, and I'm eternally grateful that he doesn't name off the other eighteen. He's the leader of the Mechanicus, the headmaster of the Forges of Mars, the spiritual core of the order's religious beliefs, and the guy whose job I will someday have.

Not that I'm plotting to kill him or anything. It's just that he's old and his job is leader of the universe's greatest inventors. And I'm me. This isn't rocket science.

Plus, he likes me.

"Lovidicus, I found another Elseworlder. We're heading to the Nimphus Ophelia cluster to check for some more like us." Between the extremis and my own IQ, I've made machine code my second language. Or, like, fourth. Does a language still count if you haven't used it for the better part of a decade? "Need anything done while I'm there?"

He stumbles for a response. Stuttering is actually a lot funnier when someone's speaking binary, beings it already sounds like a prolonged fart.

"Who is this other Elseworlder, and can you trust him?"

"A man named Magneto, and yes." Talking with members of the AdMech is a bit like filling out a form. They ask you everything up front and you fill in the blanks for them. There is little emotion thrown around.

"Understood. Nimphus Ophelia is a warzone. Titan Legio Invigilata is deployed on fourth planet. May need assistance."

And then the line closes. No goodbye or good luck. Not even a quick 'can you do that?' But I've come to tolerate that. Besides, I'd do the same thing.

"Learn anything?" asks Magneto.

"Nothing that concerns you," I reply. "We're two hours out. Try to sleep."

"My boy, after my treatment, I no longer even require sleep."

"Oh, good then."

I crank up the volume on the Starhopper's speaker array and hit play. Lensherr starts complaining, but I can't hear him.

AC/DC: blocking out annoying people since 1973.

((' '))

Lovidicus wasn't kidding. Nimphus Ophelia is a warzone. The whole system looks beat to hell, and as we skirt deeper in, we pass planets where whole continents are burning. The remnants of war fleets are scattered through the orbits, tau ships floating in massive naval graveyards. I don't have to maneuver much, as my passenger has started to busy himself with pushing the wrecks out of the way.

Okay, I'll admit he has a few uses.

The Ultramarines have done a real number on this place. I can't say I'm surprised, though. As a chapter of Space Marines, the boys in blue are the equivalent of low-grade super heroes. A squad of them can put down a planetary rebellion. From what I see here, there's at least a company involved, and if they have a Genosha vet with them there's no telling what they're capable of.

"Which planet?" I ask.

"The third," he replies.

"Huh."

"What?"

"Nothing."

((' '))

We set down in what's left of a city, behind a destroyed warehouse. The planet used to be Imperial, then the tau took it, so most of the architecture is in a weird state of half-human, half-fish. Magneto hovers down from the passenger compartment and I smack the Starhopper's hull.

"Go on, Jarvis. Break atmo and stay cloaked until I tell you different."

"Should I stay geosynchronous with your position?"

"Sure, but don't hesitate to break that if you get into trouble."

"Absolutely, sir." With that, he takes off into the morning sky. His passage disturbs the palls of smoke that cover the city's skyline, and then he's gone.

Magneto's looking at me. "Do you miss him already, Iron Knight?"

"Did your mysterious treatment increase your douche factor?" He starts to respond, but I cut him off. "Rhetorical. Anyway, where is this guy?"

He hovers above the buildings and looks around. "If my estimates are correct, he should be to our north."

"You know, Lensherr, I don't think you want to be flying around here."

He starts to respond when a hail of missiles scream out of the sky right for him. I throw myself to the side and spread my armor shield, ready for the impact. Then the missiles fly back into the air as if smacked aside.

Lensherr looks down at me. Behind him, the missiles explode. "My dear boy, did you think they would be able to shoot me down? Some of us have real powers, you know."

I stand up. Powers? Let me stab him in the throat and we'll have a discussion about who has real powers.

"So, north?"

((' '))

The missiles were self-propelled Whirlwind artillery ordinance; Space Marine equipment. Initially, I thought that would be the last of the things we would have to deal with. Two minutes of moving through the city on foot changed my mind.

Apparently, part of Ultramarine doctrine is to hammer every God-damned square inch of the city with missile fire every ten seconds for the duration of your operation. Not that the bombardment is actually hurting us, it just gets annoying having to wait every few blocks while Lensherr crushes them with his mind.

We haven't run into any ground troops yet, but it won't belong.

After another few minutes, Magneto stops in front of a cathedral. The thing is huge, and even in its semi-destroyed state, is still an impressive sight.

"This it?"

He nods, not taking his eyes off the entrance.

"Okay, here's how we'll do it: I go in the front door while you loop over the top and come in the destroyed roof."

"Very well." He floats into the air, leaving me on the ground.

I take a breath and walk inside.

((' '))

The snarl echoes through the cathedral, and even as my suit analyzes it, even as my brain flicks through an audio library and IDs it, I already know the sound. I would know it anywhere.

Wolverine hits me like the three-hundred pound five-three Canadian he is, and despite all my servos and stabilizers and power, I still can't stand up under his sudden aerial assault, and we tumble to the scattered stone floor.

"Goddamnit, Logan! Get off me!"

Three blades break through my armor and slice into my gut. The pain blisters through my body, and my vision blurs. The Extremis coating me tries to compensate, fluctuating the synthetic implants in my brain to ease the sudden blindness. I still can't help but scream.

"What's the matter, bub?" The blades twist in my gut. "Can't take the pain? Not used to someone getting a hit in on ya?"

"Shut up!" I crunch up and flare my boot boosters into his chest, kicking him twelve feet into the air. I struggle to my feet and follow him up, catching him mid-drop and powering skyward. We blow past Lensherr on our way up, but I don't stop: I'm busy.

I hold him by the neck as we blow the sound barrier six times over. I lay into him with my free fist, pummeling his face. At this speed he can barely move, let alone fight. His nose breaks under my gauntlet, his jaw snaps out of alignment, and one of his eyes is punctured by my knuckle. Eventually, the beating starts to hurt me more than him; with the skin pealed back, nothing's keeping his unbreakable skull from denting my fist.

So I drop him, all two thousand feet down to the deck. I track him as he breaks the top of a tower and lands in a street, his impact cratering the rockcrete, before drifting down after him.

"Was that necessary?" Lensherr asks as I pass him.

"Yes," I reply. My gut still throbs; the extremis is lagging on its repairs to my biology. "He attacked me. Why the hell didn't you help?"

He grins. "It seemed like you had it under control."

"I hate you."

"So you've established."

We land on the street as Logan's getting back on his feet. His muscles and skin are crawling back across his exposed skull and a hole through his gut is making its way closed again. A thick piece of bloodied rebar is bent next to him; evidently, I wasn't the only one to get stabbed in the stomach today.

"You cooled down yet?" I ask.

Logan motions to his throat and begins to pull pieces of glass from it. We wait until he finishes and lets it heal.

"What the hell're you doin' here?"

"We could ask you the same thing," I say.

Magneto nods. "Indeed. Why are you here, Logan?"

Wolverine points a clawed hand at Lensherr. "You shut the hell up! Bad enough I gotta talk to Stark; I ain't takin' crap from you."

I would tell him to calm down and then explain the situation, but Lensherr and I are very different people.

At a snap of his purple-gloved fingers, Logan is launched through a building.

"Damnit," I mutter.

"What? He was a problem."

I point at the hole in the building. "He didn't stab you."

"Because I didn't give him the chance." Lensherr winks. "Always be assertive, my boy. Helps keep the cattle in line."

I shake my hand and take off to find where Logan's landed. "Wait here. I'll talk to him."

((' '))

Logan, _Wolverine_, is a scary man. While I've learned to kill as a matter of necessity in this dark future, Logan has never had compunction against it. He is a rare breed of man, and I don't mean the claws and healing factor. Logan would kill anyone given sufficient reason, but the truly chilling thing about him is that I suspect he likes it.

We've never gotten along, but I figure he'll be more willing to talk to me than Lensherr. There's a lot of bad blood between them, with a lot of adamantium theft and beheadings in their history together.

I find Logan knee-deep in more killing. Magneto's throw landed him in a courtyard held down by a squad of Ultramarines, so now, I find him fighting for his life, claws-to-chainsword.

A bolt explodes against my shoulder as I land and I level my gaze with the veteran sergeant holding a smoking bolter. My scanner blinks across his armor, highlighting a full personnel profile: name, age, honors, commendations, rank, everything.

How does the Mechanicus have this kind of information? We're paranoid.

"Sergeant Grithric! Stand down!"

"You don't give me orders, Mechanicus swine!"

Another trio of bolts blast across my chest and my visor flashes; two dents in the upper layer. Grithric charges, chainsword roaring.

I draw my sword and meet him halfway, knocking his blade aside and putting a repulser blast through his body. His chest cavity is vaporized and he drops to the cobblestones.

Wolverine laughs as he tears into another of the Marines, his claws ripping open the Astartes's throat. "There ya go, Stark! Kill 'em all!"

I don't like doing this, and I like Wolverine's approval even less, but the Ultramarines mean business. No one in this world pulls a gun or a sword without meaning to kill you, and if you don't kill them first, chances are they'll succeed.

I swing backward and behead a charging Ultramarine. His head spins across the courtyard and bounces against the floor as I power into another of his brothers, burying my sword in his torso. The Astartes roars in my face and fires point-blank. The bolts break against my armor, electing more alarms. The layers of alloys are wearing down under the barrage.

My unibeam flares and the Marine's head disappears in the blue flash. I drop the corpse and turn as Wolverine finishes the last man. He pulls his claws from the rent, blood-spattered blue armor and grins at me.

"Tony Stark." He says it like he finds the whole thing cute. "Never thought I'd be in a scrap fer keeps with you at my back."

"People change," I say.

"Some do. Others don't."

"Look, Logan, we've gotta talk—"

Wolverine stops me with a hand. "No we don't. Timeslide, Genosha, future. I got it, Stark. I don't need explaining."

"Huh." I really can't hide my surprise. Logan's tough, but he isn't the smartest guy. "How'd you know that?"

"I'm an X-Man."

Wolverine says it like it explains everything. Oddly enough, it does. Any guy sharing a team with Cable has to have seen a timeslide portal on at least a few occasions.

"What're you doing here?" I ask.

"Killing Ultramarines for the tau," he says straight up. "And no, I ain't going with you. Cyke already tried to get me on his team, and I told him the same thing. I ain't doing this super-hero thing anymore, and I sure as hell ain't doing it fer your piece of shit Imperium.

"Cyclops has a team? Where?"

"Yeah, and I don't give a damn." Wolverine starts to walk away. "See ya, Stark. Have a good life."

He walks out of the courtyard and disappears down a side street. I don't try to follow him. Logan's as determined as he is violent, and most people that try to sway the former tend to find out about the latter. I'm not about to go and commit more PR suicide.

I'm not blind to the fact that I just helped a xeno-sympathizer kill a squad of the Emperor's Finest, and my repulsors don't exactly leave subtle wounds. The second their comrades stumble across this courtyard, they'll know who did this. Even leveling the place wouldn't do any good; my signature's in the damn air, lingering in the form of a thousand mites of particle residue.

Looks like I'm not going to be able to help Legio Invigilata after all.

"Well?" Lensherr says as he lands next to me.

"We're leaving. Wolverine won't come."

Magneto shrugs. "What a loss."

I ignore him. "Jarvis? We're ready for pickup."

"Understood, sir. En route."

I take one last look at the courtyard and the ten blue bodies and sigh.

Explaining this is going to suck.

**Author's Note: Thanks for the reviews. I just want to say that I'm not blind to the ripples that Stark's actions should cause in the Imperium, and that will be explored.**

**Also, I'm trying to put out one chapter each weekend. I do this with all my on-going stories, and this particular one get's updated on Fridays.**

**Anyway, let me know what you thought. Later.  
**


	3. Chapter 3

Once we get back in orbit, Lensherr turns to finding the next location. He hasn't said much since we parted company with Logan. I don't blame him. He wants to find Wanda, not Wolverine. I understand his problem. After years of searching, he finally has the means to find her before she relocates, and now she's being kept from him just by random chance. I understand the feeling, to have something so close just to let it slip away.

Of course, mine was out of carelessness. I never treated Pepper right, now that I think about it. I think maybe I always knew it, though. She was always there and I just… ignored her, took her for granted. I never made the move I should have made, never had the guts to man-up and tell her what I really thought. Things kept getting in the way; working three jobs for me and Happy and raising kids for her.

But when everything lined up and both our schedules were clear, what did I do? Started a war and got my closest friend killed. Good work, Tony.

But while I understand Lensherr's pain, can even sympathize, I don't want him to find Wanda. If he does, he'll be done, and I'll be hung out to dry with no way to find the rest of the elseworlders.

"Found it," he says. "There."

He pings a star with his end of the navigation interface and the data scrolls across my HUD. The location bothers me.

"Do you know what that is, Lensherr?"

"Yes."

"Are you sure that's the right spot?"

I can _hear_ his smirk. "I'm positive."

"That was a horrible magnetism pun," I reply. "Jarvis, lay in a course."

"Sir, am I to understand that we're going to willingly dive headfirst into a war?"

"Yes," I sigh. This is the worst idea in the history of bad ideas, and I know bad ideas. I came up with the Superhuman Registration Act. "We're going to Cadia."

_Iron Knight_

_Chapter Three: Final Justice_

When we're in-transit, I block the audio to the passenger compartment. Lensherr doesn't notice. He's been staring at nothing for the past twenty minutes.

"Jarvis, fire up the StarkCom."

"Having secret messages are we sir? Shall I keep tabs of this in your diary?"

"I'm going to scrap you one of these days, stupid computer."

"Indeed, sir." He pauses. "StarkCom signal working. Uplink established. Transferring audio."

My helmet pickups crackle before resolving into the voice of Lovidicus. "Iron Knight, query?"

"Fabricator General, we're en route to another elseworlder, but I've got information that needs double-checking."

"Understood. Information?"

"Tip on a group of elseworlders led by a man, alias Cyclops, real name Scott Summers."

"Understood. Investigation adepts processing request, level vermillion."

While we aren't quite Inquisitors, the Mechanicus isn't without its own espionage arm. Specialized adepts will see to sifting the galaxy for Summers's team. The tech priests and enginseers stationed across the Imperium serve as their eyes and ears, and through them, the Mechanicus has established a reliable information gathering network.

It's important that they find him. If anyone besides Lensherr holds the key to locating elseworlders, I'll put my money on it being Cyclops. Well, probably someone on his team; a telepath or some mutant whose power is seeing astral flares or something, but whatever. Same thing.

"Further query?" Lovidicus asks.

I rotate around in the cabin, free of my restraints, and see Lensherr looking at me, his face pressed against the reinforced glass that separates us. He doesn't look happy.

"Uh, no, that'll be all. Hail the Omnisiah." The channel closes. "Lensherr, what the hell?"

His mouth moves but I can't hear him. I sigh and peel back the sound-proofing.

"You muted my ears," he says. "Secret conversations?"

"No."

"Yes."

"Jarvis!"

"I'm sorry, sir. This must be a side-effect of my being a 'stupid computer'."

I thump my head against the restraints. "Look, Lensherr—"

"Don't worry, my boy. I understand you don't trust me. I don't expect you to, truly." He stares at me. "That said, please, don't cut me out of the loop if you don't have to. We're both in this together."

I nod. "That sounds reasonable."

It does. So far, Lensherr's done nothing to put us at odds. He's helped me at every turn, and though we don't and never will get along, I don't find myself completely paranoid around him.

"Good." He smiles. "I would hate to have to crush you in that little tin can of yours. Now then, I'm going to take a nap."

"Thought you didn't have to sleep."

"Not technically, my boy, but sometimes I do enjoy the act itself. Please keep down that ruckus for a bit." He rolls over, and all I can see is the back of his helmet.

"Right," I mutter. "I'll be sure to do that."

(' ')

The Starhopper jettisons us at 8,000 feet above Cadia, still in the lower atmosphere, and breaks its descent run, peeling back into the clouds as we fall. I let myself plummet, gravity dragging me down at terminal velocity. Magneto does something similar, but pulls ahead of me. Probably pulling himself down, I realize.

My suit starts sifting through the constant chatter of ground troop radios, flicking through the channels. I get a general assessment from the chatter: Cadia is under attack, and Chaos is laying siege to several cities across the planet. I can hear Guard units calling for support and broadcasting signals for help, mixed in with channels flooded by the raving chants of the Archenemy's forces.

So, nothing new.

Cadian cities are called Kasrs, and are more akin to military forts than actual cities, so when I breach the cloud layer and see one _burning_, I know the situation is dire. The radio keeps squealing.

"Artillery moving to positions outside of Vallock—"

"Kill! Maim! Burn! Kill! Maim! Bu—"

"By the God-Emperor, we're losing the line! We can't hold them! Fall back! Fall—"

"Hold your position, soldier! These traitor scumbags aren't taking our home on my watch!"

I stop the auto-scan and isolate that signal, tuning it in as the speaker continues.

"Now come on, boys, let's show them what being a Cadian really is! For the Emperor!"

On the fields below, a tide of Cadians, tanks, and flyers slams into the Chaos lines outside of Kasr Vallock. I rotate and break my descent, bringing myself to a hover. Even from this high up, I can hear the roar of the Imperial countercharge; a thousand voices raised in a battle cry.

Now the voice makes sense. Only one man in all of existence could inspire men to that level of vigor.

"This is Iron Knight of the Adeptus Mechanicus. Captain America, is that you?"

The reply comes back strained as he shouts above the malady around him. "That's Captain Cadia to you, chum! If you've got something to offer this man's war, then get your tin rear end soil-side! If not, then you're welcome to kindly bounce back into orbit and leave the fighting to the real men!"

"Steve, it's me! Tony, man!"

"Well that's just great!" he shouts back. "But I don't care if you're jolly old Saint Nick, fella! You either help us or don't, because I'm done talking!"

Just before the channel closes, I can hear his shield slam into someone's helmet. I know the sound from experience. Someone's getting hammered.

"Well, well, well," Lensherr hovers up next to me, "Captain America. What are we to do?"

"Easy." I draw my repulsor blade. "We help him win."

(' ')

According to my onboard computers—of which I have twenty, all very accurate—the engagement outside Kasr Vallock consisted of over a hundred thousand soldiers, fifty thousand tanks, and a full three wings of air fighters. Three quarters of these were aligned with Chaos as part of Abaddon the Despoiler's newest Black Crusade, and where it not for the intervention of myself and Magneto, it would have resulted in a horribly violent win for the Cadians, with few left standing.

Instead, it takes an hour and some change.

I find myself dug-in knee deep in the enemy, forming the spearhead of the Imperial advance. The repulsor sword cuts like a knife through butter, goring the heavily armored Traitor Astartes that lead the attack. Heads roll and I keep going, blasting at range with my free hand and cutting anything that gets close. Incoming fire, projectile and las-blasts both, bounce from my armor shield, causing little more than a shimmer in its surface.

Cap is beside me, swinging with his own shield and firing with a lasgun. Nothing fancy, not even one of the specialized hellguns used by the Cadian Shock, but a regular, stamped from a factory lasgun. And he's still doubling my bodycount. Steve will never cease to amaze me.

"Iron Man!" he shouts.

"Iron Knight."

"Whatever!" He swings around and decapitates a slobbering daemon with the edge of his shield. The nearby Cadians break into cheers. "We've got enemy Titans coming up the east approach. Think you can fix that?"

A defiler swings one of its claws at me. I duck it and return fire with my unibeam, vaporizing the walker's core and sending it waddling off to a slow death, residual spasms jerking its mechanical body.

"Give me a second!" I reply, swapping frequencies. "Magneto, we've got Titans to the east. Can you give us a hand?"

"I'm afraid not. My hands are quite full at the moment."

"With what? I don't see you doing anything down here."

"Look up."

I do. The sky is a cyclone of whirling steel as Chaos bombers, fighters and troopships are dashed to death upon the busted frames of their comrades. A fighter clips another and the two become one, compressed into a ball of junked steel. More keep coming from orbit, but don't make it past Lensherr's interference, caught on his invisible web trap like flies to stick paper.

"Okay, I believe you." I turn back to Steve. "Sorry, Captain. Looks like we're on our own."

Steve blocks a chainsword with his shield, breaking the blade and throwing the Marine off balance. He reaches out and jams the barrel of his lasgun into the creature's howling mouth. One squeeze later and its head is gone.

"Plan B, then!" he declares. "Iron Knight, you and I are taking these monsters down!"

"Um, alright."

Steve locks his shield onto his gauntlet and puts it in front of him. "Then get behind me, chum, because we're going in!"

He hits them like a force of nature, running right through the Chaos advance, sending cultists and Traitor Marines flying out of the way as they fold around his unbreakable shield. I follow him on my jets, keeping pace with his super-soldier charge and swiping the stragglers he leaves behind alive.

Needless to say, I don't have to do much.

(' ')

Three Titans bear down on Kasr Vallock, three colossal god-machines with cannons that given the chance will level the Kasr's walls and annihilate the city within in mere hours. Two are Warlords march spread apart, the ground shaking beneath their mighty tread, as they send the men beneath them screaming and running in fear. They are led by a much larger machine: an Imperator Titan.

My suit recognizes it as _Omnipotent Claw_, one of the god-engines that had served in the defense of Terra during the Horus Heresy. To see it now corrupted like this verges on painful. It's downright offensive.

The _Claw_ doesn't even fire on the ground forces. The crew must think that beneath their realm of responsibility.

Well, they're going to pay for their arrogance in about ten seconds…

"Iron Knight, give me a boost!"

Despite everything, this still makes me grin. "Absolutely, Captain Cadia."

I grab him by the shield and fling him into the air, using my jets for extra strength. He summersaults up and lands on the rim of the eye carved into the Titan's skull face. In a moment, two melta bombs are planted on the armorglas. Steve ducks behind his shield and detonates them, the explosion rushing outward.

He rolls in through the vacated eye and lays into the crew, knocking security servitors aside and shooting the control princeps through the face with half a clip. He plants the rest of his explosives and abandons ship the way he came in, clicking the detonator as he falls.

Behind him, the entire Titan shudders under the successive detonations in its top. The neck joint blows out completely, and with a final groan of stressed steel, the _Omnipotent Claw_'s head falls from its mount.

Steve lands in front of me and rolls to his feet. Behind him, the Titan's head slams into the ground, sending tremors for miles. Its body falls next, quadrupling the impact force and knocking the Chaos forces—those not crushed, anyway—into an instantaneous retreat.

As the field clears of enemies, I turn to Cap. "Beautiful. Just straight-up beautiful."

"Appreciate the compliment, Iron Knight, but I'm afraid we don't have time for sitting around!" I swear, if he ever stops talking like an army recruitment commercial, I'll die of shock. "Now come on! We've gotta finish off these other two!"

"Sure." I point to the one on the left. "I'll get that one. Want me to throw you at the other?"

Cap reloads his lasgun. "No can do, unfortunately. I used the last of my melta bombs on that big one."

"Well then, I guess I'll have to interfere."

I look back in time to see Magneto drift to the ground behind us before he crushes the Warlords into each other.

"Or we can do that," I mutter. "Cap, before you do anything hasty, I just want you to know that Lensherr's on our team. He's a good guy now."

Steve looks at me. "Tony, I've been around a long time, and I know for sure that while a snake can change its skin—"

His shield lashes out and clips Lensherr on the chin, knocking him to the dirt, cold.

"—it's still just a snake!" He lifts the shield above his head, aiming for Lensherr's neck. "Die, Pinko!"

"Damnit, Steve! No!"

Well this is just the best day ever…

**Author's Note: Nothing much to talk about here, other than to thank everyone who's reviewed so far. Keep that up, if you don't mind. It helps me learn what you want and what you think, and it helps you read a better story, so please throw your chips in.**

**Over the course of these notes you'll find that I like reviews. A lot.**

**See you next week.  
**


	4. Chapter 4

"I've fought tyranny for a hundred years, and I'm not about to let you do to Cadia what you did to Genosha! For Cadia! For the Emperor!"

Cap's screaming now and landing punches in Lensherr's face. Blood's pouring from Magneto's nose. I should probably intervene here.

"Okay, break it up."

Steve wheels around. "Tony, don't give me that crap! I can't believe you would consort with his kind, so what gives? The good guy life get too tame for you?"

"Silence!" A dead suit of Traitor Marine armor collides with Cap, knocking him aside. Lensherr gets to his feet. "'My kind', Captain? My kind! I always knew that you were racist, but to stoop this low—"

Now I intervene, for real this time. I step up and get right in Magneto's face. "For God's sake, Lensherr, could you keep from pulling the mutant card for half a second?" I turn to Steve where he's pushing himself out from behind the armor. "And you. Cap, you've known me a long time. We're friends. Do you honestly think I would team-up with Magneto without a good reason?"

"I don't know, Tony, I seem to remember some worse choices on your part."

I sigh. "Steve, that was 38,000 years ago. Get over it."

"Seems like yesterday to me, soldier." He stares at me with his Steve stare. Suddenly I feel lower than dirt. "Fact is, your actions killed heroes. You probably think that what you did on these fields today atones for that, but the truth is that you've got a long way to go, buster."

Cap turns and walks back toward the Kasr, met by a legion of Cadians and armor marching up the battlefield. They cheer when they see him, and he salutes them.

I grab him by the shoulder. "Steve, look—"

He spins on me and brings his shield edge up in line with my throat. It's the quickest movement I've ever seen. My suit didn't even track it.

"This'd better be important, chum."

"Just a question."

"Shoot."

"Why Cadia? Why the new uniform?"

Steve holds my gaze. "Because of all the people in this grim world, they're the ones that need me the most. When you've got daemons knocking down your front door on a daily basis, you gotta have a hell of a morale booster.

"That said, we don't need your kind here. So, would you kindly get the hell off my planet?"

_Iron Knight_

_Chapter Four: Allies, Enemies, and In Between_

I would never expect Wolverine to like or trust me, and I was okay with that. But now Steve has a problem with me. I know we didn't part on the best of terms—what with the Stamford/Civil War/Death of the Dream thing—but I never thought he would be so against me here of all places.

It's a scary world out there, but am I being naïve to think that us Elseworlders sticking together is a good idea? The way I figured it, being 38,000 years in the future would sort of dissolve all those good guy/bad guy boundaries we'd set for ourselves. Apparently, this isn't the case.

My partnership with Lensherr—Magneto, I mean—has caused me more grief than anything on this little adventure. I really ought to just pull the plug on the whole operation before I do something I'll regret more than killing a squad full of Ultramarines.

But I won't. Not until we've tried one more location. If this one's a bust, I'm done.

((' '))

Jarvis wakes me when we're dropping to sub-light, and I open my eyes to see the stars solidify from streaks to dots and a system of planets pop forth in front of me. Off the Starhopper's bow is a mess of steel girders and gothic steeples suspended in the vacuum, more akin to a mass of cathedrals and cannon batteries than a coherent structure.

"Jarvis, what am I looking at?"

"Deep space station Dominus Astra."

"Great. Extrapolate."

"Established in this region of the Ultima Segmentum in 647M38, Dominus serves as a spiritual outpost for the Cult Imperialis. Home to over five hundred thousand priests and defended by a full battle contingent of the Adepta Sororitas, the station is easily up to defending itself. It is presided over by Lord Ecclesiarch Markus Illidon."

"Okay." I look up at Lensherr's cabin. "Thoughts?"

"Start with Illidon." His eyes are glowing their creepy glow again; he probably has a fix on the guy. "He's the most likely candidate."

"Sir?" Jarvis asks.

"Take us in," I reply. "And get a docking waver and a vector from their harbor control. Announce our colors, if you will. Let's see if we can do this right."

((' '))

We are admitted quickly, my Mechanicus clearance getting us into the station's upper spires with priority access. The elevator passes hall after hall of cathedral-quality architecture and the lower adept accompanying us keeps up a running commentary on the station's history.

I'm tuning him out for the most part; there isn't anything in his running speech that I haven't already learned from my armor and Jarvis's memory banks. I know all about the plague victims these halls hosted in the mid-M40s and the Ork raiders that assaulted the outpost just a year after its completion.

Magneto has never heard any of it before, but he doesn't seem to care. In fact, he makes it a point.

"My boy," he starts.

"Yes, sire?"

"If you continue to yap, I will put that stanchion through your face."

The adept's mouth snaps shut. A gulp escapes his throat, and he looks frantically at Lensherr, expecting reprisal.

It's a rude, crude show of power, but I can't help chuckling. This earns a grin out of Lensherr, like we're comrades.

God, was Cap right?

((' '))

We find Ecclesiarch Illidon in a chapel at the very pinnacle of the station's highest spire. The chamber is empty except for us, and Illidon is kneeling at the front of the room, just before an altar to the God-Emperor of Mankind. A statue of the man himself dominates the view, and when contrasted against it, Illidon seems impossibly small and frail.

The adept waits for the Ecclesiarch to finish his prayers before announcing our arrival. "Lord Ecclesiarch, I present Magos Superior Anthony Stark, the Iron Knight, and Erik Lensherr, the Master of Magnetism."

I turn to Lensherr. "Seriously?"

"What?" he asks. "They wanted a title."

Illidon stands up and turns to face us. He looks impossibly old, with fading hair recessed atop his head and hands that he wrings in nervousness. He wears a worn-out robe and nothing more, not even sandals, and as he pads toward us, I can't place him.

I have never seen this man before in my life, and I would remember him. My brain is a computer. I don't forget things.

I look at Magneto, and he just nods. That's it, then: this is the Elseworlder, but neither of us remembers him.

"Thank you, Adept Soria," he says. The voice matches nothing in my databases. "You may wait outside while I discuss matters of faith with our guests."

"Absolutely, Lord Ecclesiarch."

When the adept is gone, I speak up. "We're sorry, Ecclesiarch, but there seems to have been a misunderstanding—"

"I should say so, mein fruend," he replies. Now the voice has changed, the accent shifting from Imperial Gothic to something tinged with… German? "In all of mein life, I never thought to see Iron Man vorking vith Magneto."

His body flickers, and the image inducer dissipates to reveal who it is we are truly facing: Kurt Wagner, Nightcrawler.

I immediately step in front of Lensherr, even knowing the futility of the motion against a teleporter. "Wagner, we don't want to fight."

"I noticed," he replies. "If I thought you had, I vould have killed you long before you stepped into this chamber." Magneto barks a laugh, but Wagner ignores it. "However, that does not make this any less atrocious."

"Look, Nightcrawler, Magneto is the only man I've met who can see the locations of other Elseworlders."

Wagner frowns. "Other vhat now?"

"People from our time, the heroes that fell through the timeslide portal at Genosha." I move forward and extend my hand. "Can we just talk for a few minutes?"

"Very vell, Iron Knight." He grabs my hand. "Ve vill talk."

_BAMF!_

My vision explodes with a blaze of purples and blues, and suddenly I'm upside down, tangled in a web of support struts as thick as my leg. My helm's translocater is placing me at two miles below the chapel.

"What the hell, Wagner!"

"I am sorry, mien freund, but I have learned to never trust Magneto or those connected vith him." Wagner lands on a beam in front of me, his feet clasping it like a monkey's, his prehensile tail keeping him balanced. "Due to this, I cannot even trust mein own mother, so I hope you realize this is nothing personal."

"It very much is personal!"

He shrugs. "Eh, so maybe it is. I vould still like to hear your… vhat, proposal? Sales pitch? Vhat?"

I try to make myself comfortable in this contorted position. It proves impossible. "Wagner, all I want is to get everyone on the same page. It's a harsh new world out there, and I think we would all be better off sticking together."

"Hm," he mutters. "Vell, it's a nice thought, but you are somewhat late to the party, I should think."

"What do you mean by that?"

Nightcrawler cocks his head to the side. "You mean you do not know?"

"Know what? What are you talking about!"

He is silent for a long moment, leaving me to stare at his yellow eyes. They have no pupils, now that I'm looking. It's quite unnerving.

"Fine," he says at last. "I'll tell you this, but you must keep it from Magneto. Verstanden?"

"So you're trusting me now?"

"Against mein better judgment, yes, I am trusting you." He moves to another beam and leans in close. "Nathan has been gathering your 'Elseworlders' since ve came to this time. He has built a paradise in the Ghoul Stars for all our people and the free-thinkers left amongst humanity, several planets strong."

"Nathan?" At first it doesn't make sense, but then it hits me. "You mean Cable."

Nightcrawler nods. "Ja, Cable. He is vhy I am here, on this station."

"Why?"

"To begin sowing the seeds of tolerance and free-thinking into an ignorant society," he replies. "I am only one of many doing such a task. One by one, ve vill break humanity from its ignorant stupor, even if it takes a million years."

"A noble goal. Why tell me?"

Wagner leans back. "Because I like you, Iron Man. I always have, and I think that if our coalition needs one ally, it's the Mechanicus."

"Thank you, Kurt."

"Not a problem, mein freund. Do you require anything else before ve part vays?"

"Only a question, Nightcrawler," I say. "Where is Wanda Maximoff?"

And he tells me.

((' '))

Twenty minutes later and we are back aboard the Starhopper, heading out of the station's dockyard. I finally pop my helmet for the first time in half a week and get a little freedom in my movements. When I do, Lensherr speaks up.

"When do you think you'll actually be able to convince one of them to join you, Iron Knight?"

I shrug. "Dunno. Everyone we've found so far seems content with their lot in life. I guess they just don't want to change."

"Or they don't want to team up with you."

I could say something like, 'you sure it's not the raving mass murderer next to me?', but that wouldn't go over so well. Instead, I just smile and nod, and ask the question I'm getting very used to asking.

"Where to, Magneto?"

He does his thing, and a moment later points out another star. I cross-reference it and note it as the Baal system, home of the Blood Angels Space Marine chapter. I log this location and put in another set of coordinates, careful to mute Jarvis beforehand.

"Okay, route laid in for the Cathka system. ETA two hours."

"Very well," he replies. "If you'll excuse me, I'm going to meditate for the duration of the trip."

"Whatever suits you."

As Lensherr goes into his trance, I review my notes on the Cathka system. Eight planets, all habitable, ranging from feral to developed. Recently, contact with the system has been lost. This would normally be troubling, but not now.

Now, we're going to find the Scarlet Witch.

**Author's Note: Sorry for the late chapter, but this story is becoming kind of hard to plot out. Several things are happening at once, so now I'm trying to tie up the Magneto arc and move on. Plus, I really wanted to get Nightcrawler's character right. He's one of my favorite Marvel characters, and it would have bothered me to no end if I'd butchered him.**

**So, please tell me what you thought of ze Increaghdible Nightcrawler and this chapter in general in a snappy review. **

**Or PM. I'm not very particular. Hell, it doesn't even have to be snappy. It's snappy-optional, really.  
**

**Anyway, later.  
**


	5. Chapter 5

As it turns out, there is a very good reason why the Cathka system hasn't been heard from in a while. In fact, there are about 67.8 billion reasons, each of them covered in slime and swarming across the surface of Cathka IV, devouring the population faster than it can retreat.

The Tyranids have hit the system in the form of a splinter-fleet of Hive Fleet Leviathan. Their bio ships are filling the atmosphere with thickened clouds of organic sludge, and acid rain is scoring the newly desolate hardpan outside the hive cities.

The system's human defenders died in a single defiant fleet action against the encroaching swarm, and now the bugs are eating everything in their path. Three planets have fallen already, and Cathka Prime is the last one standing. Its citizens have retreated to one spaceport outside of the fallen capital city New Haven, and with it they have given up any semblance of a defense. The last space fighters on the planet are leading the evacuation off-world, keeping a hole open for the modified freighters and inter-system transports to escape.

They would be doomed to fail were it not for the interference of two mutants: Wanda and Pietro Maximoff, the twin children of Magneto.

Both of them are stronger than I've ever seen them, and I can see their contributions to the defense even from ten thousand feet up. Pietro skirts the edges of the Tyranid horde, jumping in and out of the alien ranks faster than their talons can scythe him, taking out priority targets with an arsenal of weaponry. I can't see him myself, but I can see his effect: a hive tyrant falls here, two carnifexes there.

And then there's Wanda. Her work is amazing here, outdoing anything I've ever seen her perform before, in the Avengers or otherwise. The waves of Tyranids crash against the shields of an army of creatures culled from the planets' crust, soldiers of rock held together by energy ligaments.

These rockmen hurl hex bolts from their palms and obliterate the bugs that make it past Wanda's more direct defense: imploding reality around the Tyranids that come near the spaceport she has decided to defend.

Both Wanda and Pietro are doing well, but there are just too many Tyranids. At this rate, they'll be consumed in another hour.

"Wow."

At first I don't believe it, but when I look over, Lensherr is wiping his eyes.

"Magneto crying? Never thought this would happen."

"Oh, be quiet," he snaps. After a second, he softens again. "Look at them. They're heroes down there, you know. Fighting against impossible odds to save a group of humans that they've never met." He pauses for a moment. "My children…"

I draw my repulsor sword. "Well, do you want to help them or not?"

_Iron Knight_

_Chapter Five: Quicksilver and the Scarlet Witch_

I slice a carnifex down the middle as I land, spilling its acidic entrails across the ground, drowning some of the smaller aliens running beneath it. My boots crush a warrior underfoot and I pivot, slicing another of the brood's head off. The third jumps at me and catches a repulsor blast in the chest, sending it flailing into the swarm. Rippers tear it apart.

The swarm's synapse link to the overall hive mind breaks in my general vicinity and the creatures go nuts, attacking at random. I sweep 360 degrees with my unibeam, vaporizing gaunts in droves and giving me a cleared four-foot berth in every direction. I work to maintain it, hitting anything that comes close with my sword and repulsors, forcing a portion of the overall force to concentrate on my little stronghold in the middle.

In mere minutes, a pile of bodies begins to grow around my feet. I hover above it, letting the xenos bound up the mound of their dead to die at my hand. Within seconds, the aerial bio forms descend on me, pecking at my armor shield. I sweep my blade skyward and open up a trio of gargoyles. Blood splashes my armor.

"Iron Knight to Magneto. I'm in the middle of the horde, Lensherr. Where are you?"

"Just getting some supplies, my boy," he replies.

I stumble under a simultaneous hit by eight gaunts. Control is gripping the aliens again. Their movements have become coordinated. I target the warrior responsible and put a micro warhead in its neck. A millisecond later, its neck ends in a fountain of ichor.

"What the hell do you mean supplies?" I ask, scanning for his location.

I find him in the air, along with a storm front of steel that trails him like a continent-spanning cloak. Pieces of iron the size of buildings follow him, and I suddenly realize what he's done.

"Magneto," I ask. "Did you just disassemble and weaponize the capital hive city?"

"Maybe."

"You're a piece of work."

I'm so blinded by the flying city that when a pair of scythe arms cut through my armor shield, I only avoid them by inches. The Hive Tyrant roars and follows through with a lateral chop of its bonesword, an attack that I block with my own blade. I hold against its strength, and am about to retaliate when its head explodes.

Pietro double backs from his attack run and springs over me, firing with a pair of storm bolters. Gaunts jerk under the hail of bolts and Pietro lands. He reloads in a blink, so fast that my optics recognize it as a blur, and resumes fire.

"Tony," he says, never taking his eyes off the fight. He dodges the aliens' attacks with ease, dodging scythe thrusts with the ease that a normal man sidesteps a drunk. His cold eyes never leave his work. "Good to see you."

A carnifex enters our section of the battlefield, but even as I take aim, its head is falling off. I didn't even see Pietro's attack.

"Good to see you, too." I swing back and bisect a lictor. "What's the game plan, pal?"

Pietro jumps over my head and lands on a warrior. My suit counts off six hundred and thirty seven blows landed in the space of two seconds as Pietro literally overloads the creature's nervous system with punches. It dies spasming.

"We take out their leadership," he explains. "Focus on synapse creatures."

"Yeah, I'm way ahead of you, but that'll take too long. Got any better ideas?"

In the distance, Lensherr is carving into the Tyranid rearguard, scything down whole broods with his makeshift arsenal of debris. While he cannot control the aliens directly like he can so many others, Magneto is still proving effective.

Pietro axe kicks a broodlord, breaking its ribcage and killing it. It's a move every Avenger knows how to perform. Again, we owe Cap more credit than we give him.

"Do you have a communicator?" he asks. I toss him one and he slips it into his ear. "Quicksilver to Magneto, come in."

"Pietro." Lensherr's laying the condescension on thick. There's no way he's going to let it slip that he cares for Pietro. The sentiment, or lack there of, is certainly reciprocated.

"Clear a path to coordinates 039 by 279." Pietro spins to avoid a talon and breaks the creature's legs before shooting it in the head. "Copy?"

As someone who never once hugged his father and regrets it every day, I can't stand to watch these two. They're so alike in their hardheadedness that it's frightening.

"I copy, Quicksilver. Magneto out."

Plates of steel that used to be buildings rain from the sky, crushing Tyranids to paste and laying a clear path from our position to a huddle of bio titans two kilometers distant, at the very heart of the swarm. Four bio titans constitute the bug forces in that location, surrounding a pack of veteran Hive Tyrants.

It's the command echelon of the alien force—the primary link from this brood group to the greater hive mind.

"Damn, Pietro. You never aim low, do you?"

"Not if I can help it," he replies. "Back in a moment."

And he's gone, flashing down the path at over three hundred miles per hour, little more than a blur against the sea of monsters. I follow him in, figuring I'll be able to keep up with him.

As it turns out, Pietro no longer seems to have a speed limit. I never reach him and watch as he shatters the sound barrier several times over on his way toward the command group.

The bio titans are too busy defending against Magneto's metal barrage with their acid maws to notice Pietro's incoming attack, and the first of them goes down before it realizes its dead. Pietro runs right under it, ripping its stomach open with twenty-odd strikes to weak points in its underbelly. He bounces between the remaining three titans like a pinball against bumpers, stabbing them and placing charges into the cuts. He jumps free of the last one and detonates the explosives, framing his fall into the Hive Tyrants with an array of fireworks and blood.

He hits the Tyrants just as fast, striking and dodging faster than they can track him. I catch up just as he fells the first one, my sole contribution a saved-your-ass moment as I carve one of the Tyrants in half before it could accidentally hit Pietro with its backswing.

Pietro lands on the final Tyrants snout, punches through its eye sockets, and scrambles its brain like a chili bowl. The creature dies and Pietro flips off of it, landing beside me as it collapses.

Around us, three billion aliens go insane.

Pietro smiles at me. "And now, with no interference, we can deliver the coup de grace."

He pulls a flare gun from a pouch on his waist and fires it into the air. I don't understand this.

"What's going on?"

"With the hive mind pressing down on the surface, my sister could not fully utilize her abilities. Thanks to your help, that is no longer an obstacle." He smiles at me. Pietro's smiles have always creeped me out. They just don't look right on his face. "Now we get to win this war."

The ground shakes beneath us and splits open, the sky is streaked with blood-red clouds, and the atmosphere becomes coagulated with ozone. Sheets of lighting strike down from the skies, frying swathes of Tyranids instantly. The aliens implode as reality itself bends to destroy them, their bodies ceasing to exist on a fundamental level. The world opens up to swallow their bodies, and when all are gone, closes up again.

The sky returns to its normal state. Even the brackish pollution is gone. The earth stills and becomes solid once again. The rock soldiers defending the space port are gone, as is the billions-strong swarm of alien bugs.

"Jarvis—"

"Sir, the Tyranid fleet has disappeared."

"Yeah," I mutter. "That's what I thought."

The Scarlet Witch has spoken.

((' '))

Magneto meets us back at the star port. He gives Pietro little more than a glance, and even less is reciprocated. Father and son shake hands. Their words are the most depressing I think I have ever heard.

"You've gotten stronger."

"So have you."

I'm not sure who said what, but it doesn't matter. They sound so similar they may as well be the same person.

"Where is she?" Lensherr asks point blank.

Pietro stops walking and we stop along with him. "What gave you the idea that I would even let you see her?"

Lensherr turns slowly, anger building in his gray eyes. "Excuse me?"

"After everything you did to her, after all the times forcing and guilting her into doing what you want her to do, what do you think gives you the right to see her at all?"

After the battle, the starfighters and cargo freighters had returned to the landing strips. Now, they began to lift off again, levitated above the ground by Lensherr's invisible grip. Around us, broken rebar shakes loose of rockcrete and hovers, pointed like spears at Pietro.

"I can convince you," Lensherr growls.

Pietro's face is a complete mask, mimicking his father's in every way. "If you think I won't kill you, you're mistaken."

"Likewise." Lensherr doesn't smirk. This is one thing he apparently does not find amusing. "Care to find out?"

Pietro tenses. Lensherr's eyebrow twitches. I step forward to stop them, but never get the chance.

Wanda beats me to it.

"Dad?"

The starfighters, rebar, discarded lasguns and forklift drop to the ground and Lensherr turns, as I do, to where Wanda has emerged from a bunker. She's wearing Guard fatigues, much like her brother, but without all the ammo pouches and battle marks. She wears a helmet too large for her head canted at an angle, the straps undone. Her hair is a mess and her face is dirty, serving only to highlight her most changed feature.

Wanda's eyes used to be lively, mischievous. Now they're dead, possessed of what Steve would call the 'Thousand Yard Stare'. Physically she's fine—my suit says so—but mentally there is something clearly wrong.

Lensherr doesn't care. He runs to his daughter and hugs her in a way he could never hug his son. He kneels down with her and clutches her on the runway, his cape sticking flush to the ground around him.

"My God, Wanda, I thought I'd lost you."

"Purple Head." Wanda's eyes light up. She giggles and takes his helmet. "Purple Head Dad. Purple Head Dad."

Lensherr is confused but only pulls her in tighter. "Wanda, my dear, sweet Wanda."

I lean over to Pietro. "Uh, sorry, but what the hell is going on?"

"She's been like this since Genosha. She talks like a kid most of the time, but she still knows what she used to. It took time to get her powers back under control, but now she only uses them after checking with me." Pietro shrugs. "She thinks everything's a game now. Her brain's totally fried. I think it's a side effect of using her powers too much."

"When did she overextend herself?" I ask. "I don't remember her doing anything too drastic before the timeslide portal opened."

Pietro looks at me. "Timeslide portal? You mean you saw that too?"

Now he's got me more confused. "Yeah, how could anyone miss it?"

"I didn't realize you hadn't figured it out." Pietro shifts from one foot to the other. It's a nervous habit and bothers the hell out of me. Pietro isn't exactly a nervous person. "Tony, this may come as a shock to you."

"It wouldn't be the first thing this week."

"No, I mean it. This is going to shock you."

"Pietro, I'm a big boy. Just tell me."

He takes a breath. When he speaks again, I can hardly believe what I hear.

"Tony, we didn't timeslide at Genosha. We aren't really in the 41st millennium, we're still in 2006. There was no timeslide portal."

"Pietro, what are you talking about?"

"I'm saying that there is no grim dark future. Wanda broke down at Genosha and accessed the hopes and fears of all mankind. This galaxy we now live in is entirely of Wanda's creation. We're living in the Scarlet Witch's reality."

I can't speak for a minute. Suddenly things make sense: why this future is so dark, so very much the antithesis of all mankind's hopes, so against our dreams. The world makes all and no sense at once, and I feel my head spinning.

"My God, Pietro. Are you serious?"

He smiles that smile that creeps me out. "Not one bit. Calm down, Tony, I was joking."

I let out a breath. "God damn you, Pietro."

He laughs his dry laugh and pats me on the shoulder. "You always were gullible, Tony Stark."

"How can you even joke about something like that?"

"How can I not?" He leans in and looks me directly in the eyes. "These are depressing times, Tony. It's good to have a laugh now and then. That much I've learned."

"Fair enough." I pop my neck and try to hide the fact that I'm blushing. "I ought to warn you that I'm leaving here alone."

His response is instantaneous. "Absolutely not. He is not to stay with us. I refuse to let him stay around her and corrupt her again. Not this time."

"Pietro, your father's been looking for Wanda since he slid, and he'll do anything to stay with her."

"I don't care."

"He's changed, Pietro. After all, I'm working with him."

He glares at me. "You and I both know that's not a ringing endorsement, Tony."

"Whatever. He means well. Just give him another shot, Pietro." I whisper the rest. "If he tries anything, just have Wanda pop him like a kernel."

That gets a smirk out of him. "Fine, Tony, I'll give him one more shot." He looks at where Wanda is trading helmets with Magneto, plopping his psi-screening grape on her head and declaring herself king of the vineyard. "If only for her sake."

"Thank you, Pietro," I say. "You're a good man."

"Better than you," he replies.

I can't really argue with that, so I change the subject. "Before I go, I have a question. Have you spoken to either of the Summers men?"

((' '))

Jarvis pulls the Starhopper in over the runway and keeps it at a hover, drawing Wanda's attention almost enough to venture out and touch it. She doesn't, of course. She's much too occupied hugging Magneto's cape.

It saddens me to see her reduced to this, but in a way it's charming. She never had much of a normal childhood after all, so if she gets to have one now, who am I to judge? God knows some days I wish I were a kid again.

"Well, I guess this is it," I say before leaving.

"It would appear so," he replies, offering his hand. "I suppose I should thank you for all you've done to help me."

"And I suppose I should welcome you." He smiles at that, which in turn gets me smiling. I shake his hand. "I never thought I'd say this, but it was good working with you, Magneto."

"It's Erik, Anthony."

I step up onto the Starhopper as it begins to rise. "Alright, Erik. My friends call me Tony, you know."

"I don't doubt that." He waves as I gain more altitude. "Farewell, Iron Knight."

At a hundred feet I swing down into the Starhopper carriage. No sooner do we break atmosphere than Jarvis has something to tell me.

"Sir, an urgent communiqué arrived from Mars while you were planetside. Would you like to hear it?"

I'm pulling my helmet off as I reply. My scalp is itching from all the time in the suit and I need to air it out. "No, that's alright. Just summarize it for me."

"Very well. It's from Fabricator General Lovidicus. Apparently, there is some trouble arising with an issue concerning the Ultramarines."

My blood freezes. During all this elseworlder searching business, I'd completely forgotten about that. News of Wolverine and I killing that squad on Ophelia III must have finally reached Ultramar, and by extension, the Mechanicus hierarchy.

The fallout on this is bound to be enormous, and pretty much shelves any extracurricular projects, including my hunt for elseworlders. I should probably be on-hand to deal with this.

"Course correction, Jarvis: full speed for Mars." I strap myself in. "Jump when ready."

**Author's Note: I suppose this ends the first arc of the story, of Tony and Erik finding other elseworlders on their way to find Wanda. Now that that's complete, the story will shift to Tony's relationship with the Mechanicus and how they deal with the political fallout surrounding Tony's killing of the Ultramarines.**

**Also, this is the longest of the chapters so far. Figured that was worth mentioning. If I may, I think it had quite a bit of asskickery in its fight sequence. Some of you had mentioned that the story needed more of that.  
**

**As always, please leave your thoughts in a review. Or a PM. I'm not too particular.  
**


	6. Chapter 6

"Jettison."

The cabin pops and I fall into Mars's gravity well. I pass the orbital factorum ring, so close that the edges of my armor shield flicker on contact with the steel, and the atmosphere envelopes me. Flames lick at my suit, pouring around the curved plates like water over rocks in a stream. Just as the flames reach their thickest, I break through to the troposphere and level out, atmospherics returning to normal.

I level out over the primary factorum city at Mach 11. Cheers sound from the conveyer streets below, and I fire a rupulsor blast into the clouds. The cheers grow louder.

Oh, it's good to be back.

I land on one of Stark Tower's shuttle pads and walk inside. Lovidicus is already there waiting for me. He's wearing one of his lither bodies with an escort of twelve heavy combat servitors and a small cadre of tech adepts.

"Iron Knight."

"Fabricator General."

"We must talk."

I pop my helmet and grab a drink from the mini-bar. Lovidicus gives me a sour look, something I'm a little surprised at; if he thinks I'm going to deal with this whole 'impending war with the Ultramarines' thing sober, he's got another thing coming.

"I imagine we do," I tell him. "What are the Ultramarines saying?"

Lovidicus nods to one of his adepts. The man moves forward on steel tentacles and hands me a dataslate, on which is a copy of the latest communiqué from Ultramar. I flip through it and get the gist.

It talks about my grievous offense of killing Astartes and then goes on to outline the terms of an apology that the Ultramarines demand from the Mechanicus, including a tithe of twelve new strike cruisers, a fresh battle barge, a hundred land raiders and my execution.

I toss the dataslate on the bar. "Well, we can't do that."

"Agreed," Lovidicus replies. "Suggestion?"

"Tell them to piss off." I take a drink and reconsider the statement. "Um, politely."

Lovidicus nods. "Logic engines are concurrent. We will refuse the directive from Ultramar."

"Thank you, Lovidicus."

Younger techpriests would flinch at the sentiment of corresponding on a first-name basis. Middle aged ones would ponder it for a moment in confusion. Lovidicus just ignores it.

"Intelligence dossier on query: Cyclops has been compiled and loaded to your cogitator bank. View at leisure."

"I'll do that."

"Iron Knight, count your elseworlder allies carefully." Lovidicus turns to leave. "By the time this debacle ends, the Mechanicus may need all available help."

The door closes behind his party and I reach for the bottle of amasec.

This is going to be a long couple of days.

_Iron Knight_

_Chapter Six: Iron Diplomacy_

It only takes an hour for Lovidicus's staff to compile our reply. When it's done, I'm given the duty of ferrying it to Ultramar. It's a lot quicker than using Astropaths and gives us an immediate response. The last thing we need is a month of silence before getting hit from nowhere by a fleet of strike cruisers.

I load up into the Starhopper at 6:00 standard, and I'm in orbit around Macragge at 7:30. The flight over was filled with Jarvis's wit.

"I can understand that the view at faster than light speeds is spectacular, but is it really necessary to become intoxicated before doing so, sir?"

"Jarvis, shut up."

"I thought you were 'clean as a whistle' now."

"I am."

"Sir, your whistle smells of whiskey."

"And you smell of stupid."

"How delightfully witty of you, sir. Might I suggest—"

"Command override directive: Silence in the Studio."

"Herarpemawum…"

Macragge is a good looking planet, especially considering its status as a favored target of the Tyranids. I make landfall in the mountainous monastery of the Ultramarines, the Fortress of Hera. I skipped the inbound flight call, but none of their anti-air defenses opened fire on me. Apparently, a 6' 5" suit of armor is below their detection range.

I land in a courtyard in front of two Ultramarines. One is in a robe and simply looks surprised to see me. The other is armored up, and upon seeing me screams 'heretic!' and pulls a chainsword.

I dodge the first thrust, kick the blade from his hand, and lock my arm around his throat. The pressure is just below the poundage needed to crush his trachea but just enough to cut off his air flow. His legs kick against my greaves. In eleven seconds he's unconscious, and I drop him to the grass.

I turn to the calmer, still-conscious Astartes. "Take me to your Chapter Master."

((' '))

Marneus Calgar greets me with a twenty-some retinue of Vanguard Astartes, the Chapter's head Librarian, head Chaplain, and his First and Second Captains. He's massive in blue armor, and each of his fists is large enough to palm my face. In fact, he reminds me of a blue, steel version of the Hulk, with repeating cannons mounted on his wrists.

According to my suit, from my current position at the foot of his throne, I could cut through his guards and have him dead in 45 seconds. But that would be rude.

Not that _he_ begins politely or anything.

"You have the gall to in your heresy set foot in this most hallowed of—"

"Hey," I cut him off, "you're the one threatening my execution."

"Because of your grievous transgressions against Ultramar!"

"Yeah, so, when did the rest of the Imperium agree with this?" I ask.

"Ultramar is a conglomerate of planets recognized by the Imperium of Man as a sovereign nation due both to its self-governance and status as space under the control of a Chapter of the Adeptus Astartes. Therefore, it is capable of its own external judgments against actions that run contrary to Astartes law." Calgar leans back in his throne and smiles. "Meaning that your Mechanicus will submit to our demands."

"Don't think so, your highness." I plop Lovidicus's response in the arms of a waiting servitor and let it scurry the document over to Calgar. "See, because of your demands, we're pulling all Mechanicus assets out of Ultramar territory. That includes your ships and planets, and the ships and planets of any successor chapters that happened to write their names down on your little petition." Now it's my turn to smile. "Your move."

Calgar doesn't yell, he doesn't pound the ground or throw a tantrum, but what I know is coming does come, and it comes with nothing more than a grimace.

"Iron Knight, return to Mars with this message for your Fabricator General: twice now you have insulted us, and now we will reciprocate the favor. Mars will burn beneath Astartes guns, and you will know the wrath of the Sons of Gulliman. All of us."

I nod. "Anything else?"

"Yes. I will cut your head from your shoulders and use it as a toilet bowl."

"That doesn't sound very loyalist of you. Which side of the Heresy were you on, again?"

Calgar pounds one of his armrests into gold shavings and gets to his feet. "You will die for that, Iron Knight!"

"Yeah, you mentioned that." I turn and walk away. "I'll let myself out. See you around."

One time, Steve told me I could be a real jerk. Sometimes, he said, I had a tendency to understate things and feign ignorance and disinterest to the point where it became maddening. He found this to be a personality flaw.

For the record, I never disagreed with him.

Also, for the record, I am worried about Papa Smurf's words of anger. I know Space Marines, and I know how serious they can be. By the time this is over, Mars will burn, and the Imperium will never be the same. I have one, maybe two months until the shit hits the fan.

I just hope I can get some help before then. Otherwise, I think we're screwed.

**Author's Note: Okay, so a long wait for a short chapter. I apologize for that, but I'm trying to get some other things off my plate right now, and besides, this chapter just had to set up the problem for the second half of this story. Now that Tony's pissed off the Ultramarines and their successors, a reckoning is inevitable. And he's started drinking again. Awesome.**

**By the way, this story may be the first of a few adventures into this weird Marvel/40k verse. I have a couple more ideas that I can't do as a first-person Iron Man story, with at least one focusing on the Avengers in this crossover and how they would deal with the huge threats in the grim dark future.**

**More on that later. For now, just tell me what you thought, and I'll see you later.  
**


	7. Chapter 7

I get back to Mars by the time dusk is setting in over the autarch spires. No one cheers, and I don't put on a spectacle. The news has spread to the ground level: war is imminent, and preparations have begun. Production in many areas has halted completely, and the planetary defense batteries—weapons the size of cities that haven't seen use in millennia—are being prepped for the coming battle.

To Lovidicus, this war is inevitable. A lot of chapters have allied with Calgar—virtually all those descended from the Ultramarines over ten thousand years of foundings. And to top it off, the Imperium as a whole has officially chosen to ignore the conflict, meaning we'll receive no Guard support, no Inquisitorial support, no political support, and, most importantly, Battlefleet Solar will _ignore_ the largest fleet action in its territory since the Horus Heresy.

The Mechanicus has a great deal of resources and a sizeable fleet, but with over five hundred chapters gunning for our homeworld, I doubt we will come out of this on top. We need allies, badly, and that will be my department. I've promised Lovidicus that Mars will be defended by Elseworlders, and I intend to keep my word.

But that's work for tomorrow, because tonight, I'm going to get terribly drunk and fall asleep in a puddle of my own sweat and piss.

What? These are dark times. Don't judge me.

_Iron Knight_

_Chapter 7: The Hangover_

The extremis just isn't hacking it this morning. Apparently, four bottles of amasec has too significant an effect to be handled by the tech-integration, as most of the extremis's concentration is on filtering the damage done to my liver. I'm thankful, of course, but that just makes this the most painful and uncoordinated planetary landing I've ever attempted.

The planet is called Iote Sybola. It is a dead world, the population of which was inhuman and has been dead since before the Great Crusade. The ruins of their civilization cover the world, a vast equatorial network of cities carved from the bedrock. Without any real weather patterns to contend with, the ruins have kept remarkably well, and I take care to make a soft landing.

I may be hungover, but I'm not an asshole. Besides, I want to talk with the people here, not get them riled over some broken pottery or whatever.

I walk through the streets of the largest of the ruin, sword sheathed, repulsors on standby. Scans return negative. As far as the suit's concerned, I'm totally alone. Then again, the suit could be picking up a lot of things—maybe it's just my mind that sees nothing. I installed psy-wards in my brain, but those were built do deal with Beta-level psykers. I have no way of knowing if they would stop an Elseworlder telepath.

_Anthony._

The voice is warm, seductive, and very much inside my head. Guess that answers my psy-ward question.

I stop walking. "Emma?"

_I sincerely hope you didn't come for a fight, Anthony._

"Check my thoughts. You can see I'm not, but if you want to tangle in another way, I'd be happy to oblige."

A beam of red flashes out of the darkness of a ruined house, hitting my chest with the concussive force of twenty dump trucks, knocking me off my feet and through a trio of smaller dwellings. I bounce off my head, snap a meme-servo in my right knee, and come to a stop in the middle of a dusty street.

"Well, I can see Cyclops is doing well…"

Summers shows up just as I pop the servo back into place. He stands atop a building with Emma, both dressed in the black robes of the Inquisition, though she is, as always, more revealing. Frost holds a boltgun. Summers is staring at me.

"That's just a sample, Stark!" he shouts. "Try anything and I'll lay on the rest!"

I pop my visor. Hopefully, he takes it as a sign of good faith. "Summers, quit aiming your face at me. I came here to talk."

"Prove it!"

"If I wanted to fight, you'd be dead right now."

I duck the next blast, roll aside, and boost right up into his face. I grab Summers by the neck and pull up, breaking Mach 2 in three seconds. If I can get him high enough, he won't be able to breathe in the thin air, and I'll—

The next blast hits me in the temple. My optics fuzz out, my repulsors cut off, and I fall as the suit's computer and my body try to deal with the sudden influx on my pain receptors. The impact strobes along my spinal link, hurting worse than anything I've felt in a long time. I scream, crying out into the darkness of my helmet.

There is a loud clang, and the wind stops blowing. When the suit powers back up, we're still eight hundred feet above the ground, but we aren't falling.

I regain my breath after a minute. "Good catch, Jarvis."

"Good for a stupid computer, sir?"

I want to respond, but Summers cuts me off, prying the helmet from my head and tossing it over the side. He grabs the edge of my collar armor and hauls me up. He thumps a device on my chest. Instantly, every electronic function in my suit shuts down.

"You want to talk?" he growls, visor smoking with pent-up energy. "Then talk now, on my terms."

((' '))

Everyone always underestimated Scott Summers. For years, people poked fun at him, at the fact that he led the X-Men from behind Charles Xavier's pantleg. People joked that when it came to mutant leaders, Cyclops was fourth, behind Xavier, Magneto, and Storm, and whenever the discussion turned to the X-Men's combat ability, everyone talked about Wolverine. After all, who was better: the clawed veteran of every war since 1890, or the kid with the laser face?

Thing is, if it wasn't for the decade and a half of slim-jokes and dying girlfriends, I don't think Summers would be what he is today. But what is he today? Well, to me, he's the scariest damn person in the universe, that's what.

"Jarvis, set us down," he says.

"Mr. Summers, I don't believe you're qualified to—"

"I will vaporize his _head_. Set. Us. Down."

"Complying."

We land in the ruins. Summers pulls me off the Starhopper. I thud into the dirt.

"I didn't want to fight, Scott."

"Yeah, we'll see about that. Emma?"

Frost walks out of the ruins to meet us. I can feel her in my mind, worming around in my consciousness like a bad memory. After a moment, she pulls out. I expect her to tell Summers what she's found, but she doesn't speak. For a long minute, I'm left in the dark as the two have a psy-chat. Neither one gives away a thing. Summers' facial expressions are hidden by the visor, while Emma—well, her last name is suitable, to say the least.

It's Summers who finally speaks. "Nate's in the Ghoul Stars. If you want to make contact with him, head that way. I can't and won't guarantee that he'll help you, but you can at least ask him."

He steps up and pulls the device from my chest. Immediately, power floods back into my limbs and I can stand again.

I pop the visor. "Summers, the Ghoul Stars cover over 8,000 lightyears of space. How do you—"

"Go there and Nate will find you, if he wants to talk to you at all. Otherwise, I don't care."

"Good talking to you, too."

"Again, don't care." Cyclops turns and walks away. "Get off this planet."

Emma lingers a second before following him, leaving me with a wink and a blown kiss. I watch her walk away, and then there's nothing left to watch. She's masked their appearance. That went about as well as I'd figured.

"Damn Cyclops."

"Sir?"

"Nothing, Jarvis."

"Very well. Shall we go, then?"

I climb back aboard the Starhopper. We're spaceborne in seconds.

((' '))

For the record, I don't like Cable. I don't like his techno-organic cyber arm. I don't like his one urine-yellow laser eye. I don't like his giant guns, future-soldier bad attitude, unwarranted superiority, bottomless power set, thick neck, broad shoulders, cropped gray hair, older-than-my-father ironic twist, or his God damn dumb mutant space nation.

But I especially don't like how I have to just wait for _him_ to find _me_ in this stupid mess of gas in the Ghoul Stars.

"How long have we been waiting, Jarvis?"

"Three hours and forty-two minutes, sir."

"Shit," I mutter and sit down on the Starhopper's rear end.

I've got enough air in the suit to last a day or so in the vacuum, and I wasn't about to just wait inside the carriage, cooped up like beans in a can. Laying out and stretching a bit feels good, but now even that's boring. I'm beginning to think Scott just sent me for a goose chase.

A proximity alarm jerks me out of it, and I look up in time to see a starship tear overhead. Jarvis starts babbling off statistics and I tell him to shut up so I can think straight. The ship is huge, easily the tonnage of an Emperor-class battleship, but with none of the gothicness. As it decelerates out of its light jump, it turns to come abeam of my location. It's smooth surface bristles with point-to-point laser turrets and shield generators, all lightyears ahead of Imperial tech.

Its nameplate reads _Graymalkyn II_. Yup, Cable.

Six more ships decelerate alongside the first. They fall into an offensive encirclement. Targeting signatures ping in my helmet.

A channel opens in my visor. "Iron Knight, this is Prime Minister Nathan Summers speaking. Welcome to Xavier Nation."

((' '))

Xavier Nation, named in the honor of you-know-who, is a collective of twelve planets in the Ghoul Stars devoted to providing sanctuary from the Imperium of Man. This sanctuary is given to any and all who seek it, so long as they are not criminals as judged by the Nation's court system. It is a utopia, or at least that's how Cable totes it.

"So," he turns to me as he completes his little explanation. We're on the bridge of _Graymalkyn II_, standing on a raised dais that he seems to favor for command. The dais, like the floor, the walls, the ceiling, and every other basic structure on the ship, is made of the same twisting, gray metal. Cable's suit is made the same way: a suit of curled, intricate armor extending from his own body.

The techno-organic virus. He has it under control.

"Have you come here to join us?" His question is blunt, without any of the conversational jockeying one would expect from a country's leader. I've come to expect that from soldiers. I'm a businessman—Cable couldn't outtalk me if he tried.

Plus, the question told me one thing. Either the virus is still restricting his telepathy, or he can't get through my psi-shields. I don't have to worry about him faking it. That's not how Nate works.

"Uh, no. Sorry." I project a hologram from my gauntlet showing Mars. "I work for them now."

His eyes narrow, ever so slightly, but the hint is there: Cable really, really doesn't like the Imperium. That's good. I can play to that.

"Don't worry, I'm not so friendly with the government either. In fact, we're kind of in a tight spot with them right now." He asks what I mean, and I tell him about Logan, Calgar's pact with the successor chapters, the impending doom of Mars, and the Imperium's hands-off policy.

He is silent for a long moment. Finally, he looks up at me. "You want my help."

I collapse the hologram. "If you don't mind. I figure it's up to us Elseworlders to scratch each others' backs, right?"

"I do mind," he says. "But I'm open to negotiation. How can you scratch my back, exactly?"

I try not to smirk. Now we're getting to the fun part, where we put things on the table and try to screw each other over. Backstabbing. Deal-making. Offers and counter-offers. Call me corporate, but this stuff gets me happy. I haven't had to do it in a while, and I'm all over this opportunity.

"I'm in a powerful position within the Mechanicus, Cable. With all probability I'll be in charge within five years, but even as it stands, I can reroute and control the flow of supplies we ship in and out of Mars." I look at him. "So, if you ever had some Imperial trouble, I can make sure that any crusade launched against you would be caught in plenty of red tape."

"We have weapons," he says. "War isn't a problem with us."

"Don't lie to me, Nathan. It's insulting to both our intelligences. I've scanned your ship, and even if I can't build some of it, neither can you. Half of the weapons on these ships are Kree knock-offs. We both know their limitations."

"Are you threatening me?"

"No, no I'm not. However, if you were to refuse an alliance… well, like I said, I control the supply flow in the Mechanicus. I can just as easily give them some of my stuff and send them your way as I could keep your little nation a secret."

He smiles at me. "Keeping one hand cocked back, right, Stark? Fine. We'll help. But I can't commit a lot of our resources, only what you see here."

"Six ships?"

"Six ships and a hell of a mutant."

I'm about to ask what he means when the dais vibrates under my feet. A force pulls at the decking, and yanks on my suit and brings me to a hover. The same happens to Nate, and we end up floating in front of each other, our bodies immobile. The suit beeps, recognizing the pattern.

"Sir," says Jarvis, "you are caught in a—"

"Magnetic field, yeah, I got that." I look around, trying to source the bastard. "Erik, what the hell is this?"

Someone laughs. The voice is high, feminine, and very much not Magneto. I look back and see her step into the bridge, her green cloak spilling across the decking as she moves. Damn, but she grew up well.

"I am not my father," she says. "That's kind of insulting, Tony."

The grip releases and we hit the ground. "Sorry, Lorna."

"Forget it." Polaris grins, and in that moment she looks strangely like her dad. I don't know what's weirder, her looking like Magneto or me still wanting to do naughty things with her.

Next to me, Cable laughs. I almost ask what when I realize: he _is _reading my thoughts. Maybe he's a better bluffer than I give him credit for. Clever.

"So," says Lorna, "when are we leaving?"

I shrug. "Anytime you want."

"Now, then."

So I follow her out to the hanger and hop in the Starhopper. She climbs into the second seat and yawns. Jarvis speaks into my helmet as I clamp in.

"Are you trying to collect all the Lensherrs, sir?"

"Shut up, Jarvis."

**Author's Note: Okay, so this chapter was short and heavy on the exposition, but that's OK, because I'm just happy to get it out. Production on this story slowed to a crawl, and that really wasn't my idea. Things just keep leaping in the way.**

**Hopefully, it'll be back on track now, with more regular updates to follow the above. ****I have ideas beyond this story, so there might be either a continuation of this story, or a new story in the Marvel/40k section. Not sure. More on that later.**

**More fun next time. Ave Excelsior.**


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